MY BUSINESS SAVED ME FROM A LIFE OF NEVER BEING ME

I don’t often tell my story in this particular way, but the truth is that in a way, growing my business, and stepping every so gradually into being the real me, saved me.

Sure, it saved me from the obvious stuff, like my fears and doubts and the perpetual voice inside of my head which told me I wasn’t good enough; would never be, but what I’m really talking about?

My business saved me from a life of never being me.

It also saved me from completely sinking, completely fading away, I should say, in a deeply unhappy and toxic marriage, but that’s a story for another day. Or maybe they’re one and the same 😉

If you had have been there at the time, during the peak years when my online business not only grew, but truly blew the fuck up, resulting in me becoming, almost overnight, one of THE go-to women entrepreneurs to follow and listen to online, you might have thought things like –

‘She just loves the hustle.’

‘She works too much.’

‘She never seems to stop or breathe’

‘She is so unapologetically her!’

That last one makes me laugh. In fact ALL of them make me laugh, not because they’re not all in some way absolutely fucking accurate, but more because, well – the bit you see, of how someone shows up? Is only ever the bit you see.

What I was learning, during that period, was that the more I ran ran ran relentlessly into my business, my writing, my message, my work, the more my own stuff naturally started to make sense and the more I felt FREE of a reality prior to that in which, for as long as I could remember, I’d been fighting in some way to me.

When I look at my brand now it has a voice. It is it’s own being (something I am SO proud of and thankful for!). You could be forgiven for thinking I GAVE it that voice, that ability to move and grow and live and breathe of its own accord; to take on its own lifeforce, to follow its own path, but the more accurate story is … it gave ME my voice. It gave ME a true connection point to my own source. It gave ME the confidence to start to truly grow and live and breathe of MY own accord. And to follow my own path.

I look back at those years when I was SO on, SO enmeshed, SO avidly insistent on the fact that ‘my business is me, and I am it! They should be the same thing!’, and my take now is that of COURSE that was my truth.

Because I didn’t know how to BE, without the business. Not because it wasn’t in me. Not because there hadn’t been moments, periods, entire seasons, where I hadn’t been FULLY in being, in leadership. There had! For my entire life that true me, unapologetic me, had been coming out to play at TIMES.

At times.

But all in all? I hadn’t yet given myself permission to FULLY be, to ALWAYS be, to WHOLEHEARTEDLY be, and to ONLY be.

I didn’t really know that that was allowed …

Except, on a deeper level, of COURSE I fucking knew, how could I NOT know, I’d ALWAYS known, and everything in my life was ultimately taking me ever so surely in the direction of saying HELL FUCKING YES TO BEING UNAPOLOGETICALLY ME. To being that extra AF, way ‘too much’ woman who knew that the gateway to everything?

Was owning who she mofo was.

My business, it turns out, was the VEHICLE for me to do that. I wasn’t ready yet to step fully into my power just for MY sake! But hell yeah I was willing (bit by bit, and then eventually fully!) to do it for the sake of my business.

It allowed me to adopt a role.

It enabled me to transcend my self.

It empowered me to put my stories and bullshit aside and do the damn thing of letting all of me out, because hey – ! The business needed it. People needed it. My message needed it. And gradually, I realised –

My soul needed it. Or, more accurately said – my soul WAS it.

My soul was and always had been the too much girl. The won’t stop girl. The never say die girl. The girl who nodded her head politely, and the did whatever the fuck she knew she had to do anyway. The crazy girl, the loud girl, the rebel girl, the ‘I’ll see your impossible and I’ll raise you!’ girl. The girl who CAME HERE TO LIVE FROM SOUL AND TO DO SO FULLY.

And that’s what it’s really about, isn’t it?

Sometimes we need something, for a moment, or a period, or an entire season, to be the trojan horse which sneaks into our life the new reality or new identity it’s time to bring.

Until one day we wake up and realise –

Fuck.

I was always 100% that bitch.

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